Some have said Kitakami would be too OP in tier VII or tier VIII. Although some of the recent additions to the game such as Asashio I am beginning to wonder if its becoming possible? Although it would end up being a Cruiser / Destroyer Hybrid in it’s role more than likely. Had my Kuma out some today like I do once in a while for the for the fun of it, Kuma is fun little ship after all. But got me thinking about the Kitakami again. Comes with with guns and 40 Torpedo tubes...

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I get torped by cruisers all the time when I play DD's. Can you imagine(no, I am not pointing fingers at you, OP)this thing in the hands of less than stellar players. I am a cruiser main, and while some could be responsible, I could see a lot of rage going on if it became readily available.

Ahem, you didn't have to be irresponsible to collect a friendly with 20 torpedoes in the water particularly when it had the historical Long Lance torpedoes that went over the horizon.

If Asashio has Torp Reload booster it can put 16x 20km Torps onto the water right now. Not much difference between that and Kitakami broadside to be honest. Which is why I am wondering if the Dev team which seems quite interested in putting BB Killer ships into game recently might mean only matter of time before Kitakami returns again.

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I can only see Kitakami being usable in operations, where friendly fire is disabled. Other than that, giving it Asashio's DWTs is probably not the best solution imo. You won't hit friendly cruisers or DDs but you'll have to rely on your paltry guns to deal with enemy ships, and we're talking T8-10 here. I'd like to see such a configuration tested though.

The thing will kill the game, either through teamkills, or people getting banned for them.There is only one scenario this ship can be allowed ingame inside of regular battles - the total and absolute removal of team damage from torpedoes.

Preferably while also nerfing torp damage.

You weren't there Thrawn, you know what horrors you ask for, what nightmares you wish to unleash.

1 hour ago, Admiral_Thrawn_1 said:

If Asashio has Torp Reload booster it can put 16x 20km Torps onto the water right now. Not much difference between that and Kitakami broadside to be honest. Which is why I am wondering if the Dev team which seems quite interested in putting BB Killer ships into game recently might mean only matter of time before Kitakami returns again.

To which end, that 16, is a whole 1 more than Shimakaze. And doesn't it have to trade smoke for that booster? and even then, that booster has a cooldown. Kit launched 20, and then turned fairly sharp for TWENTY MORE. The only good thing was a down time around 130 seconds, But given the volume of fire and all, worth the wait. Not to mention that you could stagger launches to match the normal output of Asashio every 26-32 seconds (to be truly even would be firing a tube on each side at some point), or a 20 torp salvo every 65 seconds.

And calling the Asashio a BB killer is a stretch. In a BB so far I have maybe a death to one, 1.8 counting one that got me mostly down in HP but his team killed me - after I killed him. And several others that I did most of the damage but others sunk. And that's only my BB tally not counting ones I put down with DD'sand cruisers. If anything GZ is a BB killer with it's [edited] 1,2,1 setup, super accurate AP and enhanced pen HE, etc. And I say that as a CV player.

Some have said Kitakami would be too OP in tier VII or tier VIII. Although some of the recent additions to the game such as Asashio I am beginning to wonder if its becoming possible? Although it would end up being a Cruiser / Destroyer Hybrid in it’s role more than likely. Had my Kuma out some today like I do once in a while for the for the fun of it, Kuma is fun little ship after all. But got me thinking about the Kitakami again. Comes with with guns and 40 Torpedo tubes...

Here's the thing: An all-Kitakami mode for fun would be great, but this would be stupid in normal game modes.

Asashio is highly specialized for what she does. She can nuke BBs and CVs, but she's very weak against anything else. A good player can still hold their own against many average or worse DD players, but two players of equal skill? The one in Asashio is screwed 1v1. And even BBs can mitigate her threat...I've been killed by an Asashio twice now: once was pure bad luck when I got nuked by an Asashio flinging 16 random torps down a channel even though I was WASDing like a madman (he hadn't even seen me due to islands, hadn't even been detected), and the other I would have died to any other DD in the same situation because I [edited] up and paid the price for my mistake. WASD is a thing.

Can an Asashio dominate a game? Yes. But she doesn't have versatility compared to most ships.

Kitakami can dump 20 fish per broadside, yes. But she would be much more visible than Asashio, she has a citadel, she's probably not going to handle real well...she would be an exceedingly frustrating ship to play, an exceedingly frustrating one to have on your team, and one you hope to see on the opposing team. She'd be strong at area denial in the hands of a good player, but that's really it. And she'd be a dream ship for griefers.

Asashio doesn't appreciably change the meta. She's an IJN torp DD that happens to trade ability to torp DDs and CAs for much lower torp detection and higher damage/flood chance.

Kitakami wouldn't fit in the meta. She just wouldn't be that fun. She'll be just as dependent on stealthtorping as an IJN DD, only slower and less stealthy. And she'll get nuked on sight, because BB players already hate torpboats and so as soon as she pops up she'll be a fire magnet, much larger and easier to hit than any DD and with a citadel. I would enjoy playing her in a special mode, but I can't imagine how to balance this boat to make her fun to play without making her OP as [edited.] I mean, you could give her DD-level stealth, but that makes no sense for a cruiser. You can give her smoke, but smoke for a torpboat is of limited offensive utility in higher tiers...smoke clouds attract enemy torps, radar means you are going to get spotted, etc. Smoke in the current meta is largely a defensive tool. You can give her long-range torps, but a cruiser whose only contribution is spamming torps from 20km away is going to struggle to do damage and contribute.

There is absolutely no reason for Kitakami to be in this game. Everything she can do can be done better by something else, and she's impossible to balance without making her ridiculously, hilariously OP or ridiculously, hilariously underpowered.

Edited May 17 by poeticmotion

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The problem with KTKM is not that it had op torpedo spam, its that all it had was close range op torpedo spam and the ship was not particularly stealthy, fast, or tanky (it was in fact even squishier than the broadside of an atlanta). I always considered a ktkm a free kill when seeing them on the enemy team.

Yes there were situations they did something hilariously overpowered and wiped out 4+ ships in a single salvo, and the ship would be less of a liability with solid team support; ive seen DDs cooperating with ktkms letting them get close enough to torp with forward smoke support. It would require a tactical shift away from anything else normal in the game just for games with this one ship, basically a whole new class of ship, and thats probably too much to ask in a WG game. A shame, it might be interesting to introduce such a ship for clan battles or something where strategies could develop around it, but it would never be good for random. Not just sub-optimal, but actively detrimental to its own team.

I think now there are more ships in the game kita kami will make less of a difference than it used to do.

I doubt you will get more teamkills with it, if the range is about 10km though. Give it a low chance of flooding.

Never underestimate the idiocy of a bad cruiser main with a lot of long-range torps.

I get TKed more by cruiser torps than anything else combined. Especially in mid-tier where newer cruiser players are getting their first ships with long-range torps. Hell, within the last week I had an Omaha put a full salvo of torps into my side in my Gneisenau....and the nearest enemy was 15km away. (Omaha has 5.5km torps.) It took an unreasonable level of self-control not to torp him back as my HP dropped to a ridiculously low level before I even got to engagement range. :/

Then, before I even said anything, he told me I shouldn't be between him and the enemy and blamed me for wasting his torps. Sigh.

Kitakami is right where it belongs...not available.

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I've eaten numerous friendly torps fired by cruisers on my team. I also see Budyonnys firing their 4km torps when the closest enemy is at least 10km away, and a Nurnberg firing its torps when the closest enemy was 12km away. One time in my Kongo I died to flooding from torps fired by the friendly Kuma. I was in a particularly bad mood on that day, and I told him to uninstall.